


Dog of Darkness, Dog of Light

by stereolightning (phalaenopsis)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: rs_games, Holiday Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-19
Updated: 2014-11-19
Packaged: 2018-02-26 06:48:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2642117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phalaenopsis/pseuds/stereolightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the whole, Christmas is not a holiday Sirius enjoys. But his friends intervene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dog of Darkness, Dog of Light

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2014 rs_games.
> 
> Thank you to starfishar for the helpful beta-read!

On the whole, Christmas was not a holiday Sirius enjoyed. It disinterred bad memories, such as the oh-so-festive occasion when six-year-old Regulus had unwrapped a fat golden package and found inside a heavy, goblin-made letter opener encrusted with emeralds and engraved with the words “toujours pur.” Regulus had nicked his finger on it, bloodying the blade. Their mother had taken the thing away at once, and placed it in the heavy oak curio cabinet in the library, out of Regulus' reach. He had cried.  
  
“Don't act like a common Muggle,” she had hissed, in the perfectly articulated French she employed when feeling particularly snappish.  
  
But Sirius was a godfather now, and that meant being around at holidays for Harry, so he'd come to Godric's Hollow, with Remus in tow.  
  
The inside of the Potters' house was like a beach at low tide, speckled with the flotsam of eighteen different Muggle craft projects, two of James' in-progress magical inventions, and a pile of pom-pommed baby hats that kept flopping down from a pair of magical knitting needles that were frantically working, mid-air, and clicking whenever they touched. All four burners on the stovetop had something steamy on them—potions, tea kettle, hot cider with cinnamon sticks. Muggle glam rock played on the stereo. Sirius had never seen anything quite like this before.  
  
Lily kissed Remus and Sirius on each cheek as they arrived. On her hip, she carried Harry, who was wearing red-and-white striped footie pyjamas that would have made Sirius' mother cringe. Harry had stopped looking like a tiny old man version of James and started looking like an adorable, chubby baby version of James.  
  
“Hello, hello,” she said. “Cider?”  
  
“Yes, thank you,” Remus said.  
  
“Baby?” Lily asked, holding out her son.  
  
“Yes, thank you,” Sirius said, and took Harry from her.  
  
She snickered and went into the kitchen.  
  
Harry's eyes were changing color, little by little, from deep blue to steely grey to now a sort of almost-green with flecks of silver.  
When Lily came back, she handed Sirius a mug with the words Railview Hotel printed on it, above a picture of a rather shabby-looking Muggle rail station.  
  
“Delicious, thank you,” Remus said. “What is that—clove?”  
  
“Star anise,” Lily said.  
  
A loud pop from the back garden indicated someone else had arrived.  
  
“That's Hagrid!” Lily said. “With the tree.”  
  
“I'll go,” Remus said.  
  
“Thank you,” she said.  
  
Remus disappeared through the kitchen door.  
  
“Makes himself useful round the house, doesn't he?” Lily said, winking.  
  
It was down to her sneaky matchmaking last spring that Sirius and Remus had finally gotten together. She seemed pleased with her handiwork. Harry started to wiggle in her direction, and Sirius handed the baby back to her.  
  
“So, obviously, this is the smartest, bravest, most fascinating child ever to walk the earth (though he hasn't actually walked yet), and I would like him to know and respect the traditions of both sides of his family,” Lily said. She pointed her wand at the highest shelf in the little closet off her bedroom, and two battered cardboard boxes zoomed down from it and landed on the floor. “So we're doing Muggle and wizard Christmas. Bit of an experiment. Help me with this, would you?”  
  
She gestured at Sirius, and then at the boxes, with her wand arm.  
  
“What do Muggles do at Christmas, anyway?” Sirius asked, pulling open the flaps of one of the boxes.  
  
One auburn eyebrow arched heavenward. “You're as bad as James, aren't you? You don't know the first thing about Muggles.”  
  
“Am not. I wear Doc Martens.”  
  
She gave an abrupt little giggle, a laugh caught with its pants down.  
  
On the stereo, an out-of-tune piano twanged, and a synthesiser wailed, and the thin white duke chanted, My momma said, to get things done, you better not mess with Major Tom...  
  
“Where is James, anyway?” Sirius said.  
  
A frothy sea of white packing peanuts threatened to overspill the box. Sirius had never seen packing peanuts before, or at least not in person. Oddly enough, this was one of the few things he remembered from his single term of Muggle Studies in third year.  
  
“He wouldn't say where he was off to. I am trying not to worry about him. But he's not alone, and he's in disguise,” Lily said. “Besides, how much trouble can a rat and a stag get into in one evening?”  
  
“I don't think you want an honest answer to that,” Remus said, emerging from the back garden, pink-nosed from the cold. “The good news is, the tree Hagrid's brought is quite something. The bad news is, it's going to take up at least a third of your sitting room. I could do a shrinking charm.”  
  
“I don't mind a large tree,” Lily said. “It's Harry's first Christmas. We like Christmas, don't we, H?” She nuzzled his little ear. “Muggle Christmas and wizard Christmas. And whatever in between. Tell Hagrid to come inside, he must be freezing.”  
  
“I don't think he can fit through the front door,” Remus said.  
  
Lily skittered off toward the kitchen door and flung it open, letting in a blast of icy air along with Hagrid's booming salutation—“Ar, look at 'im!”  
  
“Harry, say hello to Hagrid,” she said.  
  
“'Lo, Harry!” Hagrid said, beaming.  
  
She waved her wand at the ceiling, and, with a crunch and a flurry of falling plaster, the ceiling began to rise, inch by inch, along with the doorframe, so that in a moment it would be tall enough for Hagrid to fit under. They continued chatting excitedly, yelling over the sound of the moving ceiling.  
  
Remus joined Sirius in the living room, kneeling next to the box of Christmas things. Remus wore a fair isle scarf patterned with crosses and poinsettias. Sirius leaned over and brushed his lips lightly against Remus' cheek. This would be their first Christmas as a couple, rather than as friends who occasionally kissed and then pretended to forget about it.  
  
“Your nose is cold,” Sirius said.  
  
“It's the twentieth of December, what do you expect?” Remus said. “Besides, you poke me with your cold nose practically every morning.”  
  
“Dog's noses are different. Your nose is frosty.”  
  
Remus arched one eyebrow. “Why are you so irritable all of a sudden?”  
  
“I'm not irritable. There's no reason.”  
  
“You know, you're good enough at deception that I almost believe you.” He rearranged his light brown fringe absently. “What's in the box?”  
“All the Muggle-y Christmas things.” Sirius reached down, through the surprisingly airy, squeaky packing peanuts (of course, wizards just used charms for this sort of thing, but Muggles made do with these funny little maggot-looking things). His fingers found something soft, with twiddly edges—and one sharp bit. “Ouch!”  
  
He pulled it out of the box.  
  
An ornament. Handmade. Two small gingerbread people had been stitched out of felt and fabric, with button eyes. They were girls—one with red hair, one blonde—holding hands. Each bore a single, cross-stitched letter on her chest: P and L.  
  
The sister Lily didn't talk about anymore.  
  
Sirius thought of Regulus, and understood. He wondered if all the crafts and potions and music were a distraction for Lily, something to keep her from her own holiday-induced gloom. This was a bit over the top, even for her. Sirius hid the ornament back under the packing peanuts just as the ceiling stopped moving and Lily's wild laughter rang out.  
  
“Yes, I agree, probably horklumps. Come in, come in!” Lily said.  
  
Hagrid entered, dragging the biggest Christmas tree Sirius had ever seen, including all twelve Hogwarts ones from all seven years of school.  
  
“Wanted him ter have a good first Christmas,” Hagrid said. “Know it's a bit much. But most of the trees out that way have got bowtruckles in, protecting 'em. Hard ter find one that don't.”  
  
Remus got up and made himself useful again by conjuring a tree stand and helping to trim a few of the wilder, longer branches. Sirius stood over the box of ornaments, watching the four of them—Remus, Lily, Harry, and Hagrid. This was the sort of scene he never would have seen in Grimmauld Place—a werewolf, a half-giant, a Muggleborn, all talking contentedly, and a giggling baby cooing at them, despite the awful events unfolding in the world outside this safe, warm little house. More hot cider was offered; tintinnabulating bells were transfigured out of broken old teacups. Suddenly Sirius felt both very happy for all of them, and very lonely.  
  
Without really thinking about it, he turned into Padfoot.  
  
Harry pointed and squealed with delight. “Dah!”  
  
“Dog,” Lily said. “Yes my darling, that's a dog. Well, really it's your godfather. Dogfather.” She giggled.  
  
Padfoot trotted across the sitting room and sat on his hind legs beside Lily, wagging his tail.  
  
“Dah!” Harry said, louder.  
  
Hagrid gave Padfoot the sort of approving grin he always gave to unusually large creatures. Even sitting down, Padfoot came almost to Lily's shoulder, and his thick winter coat had come in, making him especially shaggy.  
  
“Got ter be off,” Hagrid said. “Promised the Prewitts I'd help 'em with that kelpie that's hiding down their well.”  
  
Hagrid gave a merry goodbye handshake to Remus, and a hug to Lily and Harry, and departed, pulling his pink umbrella from beneath his hairy coat.  
  
Harry burbled something at Padfoot. Padfoot held out his paw as if to shake hands. Harry laughed. The world was new to him, and full of happy surprises.  
  
Lily handed off the baby to Remus and retrieved her box of decorations. She held out a red Christmas bauble. “Come here, Padfoot,” she said. “Show Harry how to put this on the tree.”  
  
Padfoot took the ornament in his mouth, loped across the room and, carefully, hung the bauble on the tree. Harry laughed again.  
  
“Now you try, little wizard,” Lily said. She held a green bauble out to Harry. He fumbled for it. The bauble rolled out of her hand and onto the floor.  
  
Padfoot trotted back across the room, picked up the fallen ball, and placed it on a low branch.  
  
“Your dogfather is very helpful,” Remus said.  
  
Lily pulled a string of fairy lights out of the box, slowly, and checked the bulbs one by one. Padfoot sidled up next to her and sniffed.  
  
“Sirius,” she said. “You smell like a dog.” She blinked at him with those cat-like eyes. He sniffed again. Playfully, she looped the string of lights, once, around his neck.  
  
They popped to life, bright and twinkling.  
  
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Oh, it's the electrical wiring! It goes haywire around all this magic.”  
  
“Dah!” Harry said.  
  
“Wonder if it's the Animagus spell in particular,” she said, tapping the hollow above her lip.  
  
“You look like the luminous hound,” Remus said. “From Sherlock Holmes.”  
  
Sirius had no idea what Remus was talking about. But he liked the mental image of a luminous hound. He nosed Lily's hand.  
  
She giggled. “All right.”  
  
She wound the lights, with utmost care, around his neck two more times, then through his front paws, and once around his middle. She tied the ends carefully into loose bows. She patted him on the head.  
  
“Good dog.”  
  
But something about his last gesture made Sirius think again of Regulus—the good son. And now the family favorite, after being second choice for so long. And now a Death Eater. Would they meet again someday, in some public skirmish, and be forced to draw wands at one another? He'd already seen Bella once, without her mask, on the occasion when Alice Longbottom had hit her with a masterful petrification curse that had seemed almost to turn Bellatrix into a permanent statue of herself. But what if was Regulus next time? Sirius would know him even with the mask—that posture, and the way he used his wand, left-handed, with a strong preference for silent spellcasting, and a Seeker's quick reflexes. Quiet, strange, and swift.  
  
Lily squinted sympathetically at Padfoot. “Oh, Sirius, why do you look so sad as a dog?”  
  
She put one small, warm hand over his snout, then skritched him under his chin.  
  
The door burst open, and in came James, wild-haired, snowflakes dusting the shoulders of his robes. “The tree came! Who else is here? Oh! Hello!” he said, noticing Sirius. James charged across the room to him.  
  
Sirius changed back into himself. “Ow!”  
  
The lights were poking him in odd places.  
  
James threw back his head and howled with laughter.  
  
“S'not funny,” Sirius said, shrugging out of the knots of lights. “Only Harry is allowed to laugh.”  
  
“It is!” James said. “Oh, I wish I'd taken a picture of the look on your face, when you changed back and it got you in the bollocks. Ha!”  
  
“Wanker.”  
  
James pulled him into a hug. “I didn't know you were coming. I would have been here.”  
  
“Where's Pete?” Sirius asked.  
  
“Order thing. I dunno what. He said it's important. I asked if I could help. He said no, Dumbledore's orders.”  
  
James pulled away and grinned. Remus had handed Harry back to Lily, and she was standing right behind Sirius. “Look, H, look what Daddy brought,” said James. He pulled a small, white, linen drawstring bag from an inside pocket of his robes.  
  
“Yes, what exactly did Daddy bring?” Lily asked.  
  
James untied the knot holding the bag closed. Something inside winked and chittered.  
  
“Fairies!” Lily said.  
  
“You like them?” James asked.  
  
“You—did you kidnap them?” she asked.  
  
“No. I just sort of... bribed them... with offers of sugarplums and biscuits.”  
  
“You _bribed_ a herd of fairies?”  
  
“Not a herd,” James said. “Ruminants come in herds. Fairies come in flocks, or hordes—”  
  
Just then, the fairies flew out of the bag, twinkling and talking rapidly in what sounded like a very old, very odd, very small sort of language. They danced in a fairy ring around the chandelier and zoomed under the sofa and hid between the branches of the huge Christmas tree. One hovered next to Lily's head, then pulled back a lock of her hair and fastened itself like a shining, living barrette to the side of her head. Harry laughed and pointed.  
  
“See, they're nice,” James said. “And this one brings out your eyes.”  
  
Lily snorted. “When are you going to stop overdoing it?”  
  
“When you stop secretly being impressed.”  
  
“You're incorrigible. I really, really can't stand you at all.” She was still smiling. “And you're going to spoil this baby.”  
  
James leaned in for a kiss, and got one.  
  
“Loathing,” Lily continued, in a low, husky voice. “Deepest, deepest loathing. That's all I feel for you.”  
  
James snickered and kissed her from jaw to clavicle, unwrapping her scarf as he went.  
  
Remus caught Sirius' eye and tapped the bare spot on his wrist where a watch would be. It was time to leave the Potters to their private pursuits.

...

Remus opened the door to their little flat on Eterne Alley, and Sirius shut it. They hadn't put up decorations of their own. The flat was as spare and littered with books as always. Their coffee table was nothing more than a pile of stacked spellbooks.  
  
Sirius waved his wand to set a warming charm on the leftovers from last night's Punjabi takeaway.  
  
“Does it matter to you?” Remus asked.  
  
“Does what?”  
  
“Having wizarding Christmas things, or not having them?”  
  
Sirius considered this. “I'm not especially keen on Christmas in the first place. I mean, it's fine for Harry, he's a baby, and for Prongs, because he's got happy memories associated, you know. But for us, Christmas was always about being good little pureblood heirs, and wearing horrible stiff dress robes, and cousin Bella sneaking off to set fire to Muggle decorations, and cousin Cissy sucking up to my father and his friends.”  
  
Remus raised one eyebrow, in that delicately surprised way that was so characteristically Remus. “Did she really do that? Bellatrix?”  
  
“Oh, yes. The Muggles always thought they'd had an electrical fire. And my mother would order huge, horrible ice sculptures of scenes from the goblin wars, you know, wizards triumphant, and goblins with these horrible caricatured faces, flailing and dying, and she'd put them out as centerpieces. And scenes of Muggles, bowing on their knees in adoration before wizards. There was a vogue for those. They passed it off as decoration, but it was dogma.”  
  
Remus frowned. “But what about Hogwarts Christmas, in sixth year? When it was just you and me staying over the holidays?”  
  
“That was all right. Mostly because I got to be alone with you.”  
  
Remus smiled.  
  
“Oh, you know me, Moony, I hate all institutions. Well, almost all. Hogwarts is okay.”  
  
“Then, you don't want sacks of fairies running amok in our home?”  
  
The scent of curry wafted past. “Can we—can we just have a Muggle sort of holiday? I liked the cider. And the music.”  
  
“Scary Monsters and Super Creeps is not traditional Muggle Christmas music, by the way,” Remus said. “It's just Lily being Lily.”  
  
“I know. One day she'll get James to dress up like David Bowie and all her dreams will come true.”  
  
“She likes them a bit scrawny, doesn't she?”  
  
“Mmmm... I do as well, come to that,” Sirius said.  
  
“Oh, thanks a lot.”  
  
Sirius twisted his lips into a smile. “C'mere.”  
  
“No, you just insulted me.”  
  
“Nah. Cryptic compliment.”  
  
Remus allowed himself to be swept up in an embrace, somehow managing both to smile and look vaguely disapproving at the same time. Sirius kissed him—slow.  
“A Muggle holiday, then. No magic. No ice sculptures,” Remus said.  
  
“And a fire. I want a big fire. Not hooked up to the Floo network. Just a fire.”  
  
“All right. A fire. And a very big Yule log.”  
  
“Yes. That. That's what I want.”  
  
Their kisses changed tempo—slower, more lingering.  
  
“I've been a prat lately,” Sirius said. “I know that.”  
  
“Not a prat,” Remus said, a little breathless. “Tetchy. Melancholy.”  
  
Sirius slipped a hand under the hem of Remus' maroon jumper; fished for the fastenings of his trousers; unbuttoned; unzipped. He dropped to his knees and brought Remus' pants down with him as Remus made a soft, surprised “oh.” Sirius nudged Remus' hips back, leaning him against the doorframe for support. Remus smelled of laundry soap and clove. Minutes later came the brackish rush of his release, and a soft, half-whispered howl.

...

The next day, they set off in search of Sirius' Platonic ideal of a Yule log, in the forest of Dean.  
  
The woods were silent, and the cold biting—less an affectionate nip and more of a full-on bite, with fangs. The trees were coated in snow. Once in a while, a dun-coloured bird with an orange throat flitted past.  
  
Remus walked a few paces ahead, stopping here and there to kick snow away from fallen trees.  
  
“Mrrrrmmmm?” Remus asked.  
  
“What?”  
  
Remus unwound his scarf from the bottom half of his face. “I said, are you sure this is all you want?”  
  
Remus held out his arms, indicating the forest, the trees. But what it also looked like, just in the tilt of his eyebrows was, are you sure I'm all you want?  
  
Sirius had never been good at directly addressing Remus' perpetual fear of abandonment. He was still very much learning how to be someone's boyfriend in the first place. It was different from just being friends. You didn't just have to be more vulnerable; you had to accept the other person's vulnerability, which was on the whole rather harder.  
  
“I mean, do you not even want presents, or—” Remus began.  
  
Sirius pulled him close, joined his gloved hands behind Remus' back. “I didn't ask if you wanted this, did I? Did you want a tree, and all that?”  
  
“No,” Remus said. “I'll visit home, for that. Mum and Dad stay up late, and make taffy, and do the singing in the morning. You know, all those Welsh things. They like doing it. They're friends with all the Muggle neighbours.”  
  
Sirius looked back the way they had come, at the winding footprints in the snow. “I love you.”  
  
Remus gave a surprised half-laugh. “Why, because I'm Welsh?”  
  
“No, because I love you.”  
  
Remus knit his brows, and warm understanding twinkled in his eyes. “Holidays really do turn you a bit funny, don't they?”  
  
Sirius shrugged.  
  
Remus pulled back just enough to kiss him, and did.  
  
They let go and walked together, side by side, through the forest again.  
  
Sirius started humming to himself. That song Lily had been playing. _One flash of light, but no smoking pistol..._ something something, and then that bit about Major Tom, and that instrument—was it a theremin? It sounded like gamma rays floating in space, or like fairies screaming in a jar.

...

They spent Christmas Eve at the Potters', drinking brandy and butterbeer, and opening wizarding crackers, and entertaining Harry with a fluffy child-friendly snitch that flew low to the ground and peeped like a baby chick when you caught it. Harry's favorite dog made a reappearance, as did a very tipsy stag who plowed right into a wall, knocking three framed photos onto the floor, and then turned back into James and howled with embarrassed laughter.  
  
At ten o'clock that night, seeing the sleepiness in the Potters' eyes, Remus and Sirius said their goodbyes and went outside to the frost-covered back garden, and disapparated.  
  
When they stopped spinning and twisting and emerged from the wild, dark nether-zone of apparition itself, they were standing near the dustbins behind a loud Muggle pub.  
  
“Hello, hello!” called a merry female voice nearby. “I guessed right. I hoped you'd come about now.”  
  
Sirius turned around. Remus' mother was standing in the orange light of a streetlamp, dressed in a thick purple coat and Wellington boots.  
Remus bounded up to her. Yes, actually bounded. Remus. Who was always so composed. It was almost funny. “Hi,” he said, hugging her. “I didn't know you were coming. Come up, will you?”  
  
She shook her head. “Have to be off. Only popping in to deliver these. Well, we were going to sing you a carol, too, but I think we can spare you that. I'm just getting over a bout of the flu, and my voice is still not up to snuff.” She pressed two small, lumpy packages into his hands. “Where's your father got to? Oh!”  
  
The elder Mr. Lupin appeared, also dressed in his warmest Muggle clothes. “Hullo,” he said. He looked like Remus, plus twenty years and about a stone of extra weight.  
  
“What are you doing back there?” Remus said.  
  
“Thought I saw a boggart,” his father said. “Turns out, only an urban fox. Have you heard about them? They're finding their way into cities. Very interesting. Maybe I'll write another book about—”  
  
“Dear, it's chilly out,” Remus' mother said, with good humor.  
  
Remus' father laughed. “Well, I write books for a reason, don't I? Organize my thoughts. It's like a runaway freight train in here, honestly.” He tapped the side of his head. Then he clapped Sirius warmly on the shoulder. “Hello, Sirius. Come by tomorrow, will you?”  
  
Sirius met Remus' eyes. He had never been around families like this, families that were warm and chatty and clapped you on the shoulder with a comfortable amount of pressure. Even James' parents weren't that friendly; they were older, and a little bit aloof, in that eccentric way that certain kinds of country gentry are.  
  
“Dad, it's our first Christmas,” Remus said.  
  
“I know,” his father said. “So pop round, will you? We never see you anymore. What was that? Sounds like a hinkypunk.”  
There had been a loud noise somewhere in a nearby sidestreet.  
  
“Probably the fox again,” Remus' mother said. She pulled Sirius into a hug. “Happy Christmas. We've got to get back before the carollers start arriving. Take care of my Remus, will you?”  
  
“I will,” Sirius said.  
  
“Good.” She patted his arm again. Her eyes were like Remus'—warm, intelligent, with a flicker of unexpected mischief.  
  
Remus' father gave Sirius a hug, too. “Happy Christmas.”  
  
“You as well,” Sirius said.  
  
“Right then,” Remus' father said. He held out his mittened hand to his wife, who took it. “Better be off. Do come for lunch tomorrow; I'm making pies and roast chicken.”  
  
And, with an elegant pop, Remus' parents were gone.  
  
Remus was smiling at the place where they had been. He turned to Sirius. “Sorry. They're very persistent.”  
  
“What do you mean, persistent?”  
  
“Well, they've wanted to visit for ages. Since we got together, really. But we've been so busy with the Order, I could never figure out when to have them over. Sorry if they caught you off-guard.”  
  
“S'okay. I hate institutions, not surprises.”  
  
Remus took Sirius' hand and squeezed.  
  
Upstairs waited a behemoth Yule log, a collection of Muggle records, and a bottle of decent red wine, not even elf-made wine—it was from Marks and Spencer. The trappings of a quiet, magic-free Christmas. Possibly, in his own flat, with his own boyfriend, without the extravagant wizardish decorations, Sirius could begin to like this holiday.  
  
“What's in the package?” Sirius asked.  
  
“Taffy,” Remus said. His breath was a thin, white cirrus cloud that caught the light of the lamps by the pub.  
  
Sirius smiled and tucked his wand into his coat pocket. He would not need it again tonight.  
  
There was magic, and then there was magic. There was a way you could alter the world, could shape it to your specifications, with your hands and your mind and ten inches of dragon heartstring. But then, there was a way that you could let someone else shape you, to make you feel and accept things you thought you never could feel or accept. Remus could perform magic, quite technically competent magic in fact, but mostly, for Sirius, it was this second kind of magic that mattered. The magic of loving Sirius enough to put up with his holiday melancholy, and of gently tugging him toward happier possibilities. You couldn't learn that at school, and Sirius certainly hadn't learned it at home, either. Remus was magic, even when he wasn't casting any spells at all.  
  
With a grin, Sirius opened the door and bounded up the stairs, toward a thoroughly minimalist, Muggle Christmas, with the one he loved.


End file.
